How mentally prepared were you for this illness in comparison to your "average person"?

I feel I faced a lot of trauma and adversity growing up. Life was already shitty. So when I became psychotic when I was 19 I was somewhat mentally prepared for the adversity of the illness. Although I do remember the first time I was in the psych ward…that wasn’t pretty. But were you prepared for this illness? Have you always been strong/tough? Or was life peaches and cream and then you came down with this illness and had no idea how to deal with it? It’s okay to be either. Thoughts on this entire subject? Are we SZ’s naturally strong people because the illness starts before the illness?? input?

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Interesting subject. I feel I was strong enough, but not prepared for the illness. Is a work in progress, the recovery of psychosis. Everyday there’s something to be aware of, some delusional thinking or just plain depression. I believe I’m getting stronger, and so are you. I’ve seen your progress :wink:

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Sometimes I say “I’m real tough to have to deal with the illness, I must be tough”. Then I think about the thousands of other people with SZ, they must be tough too.

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Sometimes I feel like the schizophrenic doesn’t find the individual. But the individual finds the schizophrenia. If that makes sense. But that may be delusional thinking.

Joe over there, if he got schizophrenia he wouldn’t be able to cope.

But Mike, he was always destined to be SZ, so he’s able to minimize the illness and handle it better.

Am I crazy or what???

Whether it was drugs, environment or just genetics that induced it…either way you have to have the genes, which may prepare you for it. idk.

Maybe I’m just an odd man out… My parent’s are still together… life was pretty stable. My parent’s love me… I know that.

There were some lean years, but our family is big, and lots of Uncles and Aunts helped out. My parent’s have never laid a hand on any of us kids… they are teachers and don’t cuss, had steady jobs… try to help others when they can. No really religion or anything like that in our house.

From the outside looking in, life probably looked pretty mundane…

But my head circus came on when I was young… I had melt downs when I was 5…

I had voices and hallucinations, over the top hyper… when I was about 8 and 9.

I was predicting the future and talking to God at 10…

When I hit 14… (after our house fire) my brain really crumbled, and my cousin introduced me to drugs and whiskey.

A lot of the damage that happened later in life I realize now… was self inflicted.

My brain didn’t know any different.

Hmmm interesting your case goes against my hypothesis somewhat. I had a good family life but life was always tough. I was always tough. I never was hit or anything more than getting spanked a few times, but I can cite trauma from my classmates, teachers, general practiced doctor, baseball coach, having to get hernia surgery right before my freshman year of H.S… It all started when I was 11. So when I was 19 I was prepared for the worst. Maybe not mentally like minii said but I was tough enough to be like “SCHIZOPHRENIA? ■■■■ YOU” instead of crying because I got the illness.

Well, when I first got sick, I didn’t have much going for me. I had stopped working, I had no friends, I wasn’t in college, I was seeing a therapist, I had no money, I was isolating, So when my disease took hold I was 19 but I didn’t have a lot to lose. My disease had been creeping up on me for a year or two. But I wasn’t prepared for what happened in my first psyche ward. I went over the edge. I became psychotic and it was horrible. I blamed it on the medication they gave me; maybe the medication triggered it, I don’t really know for sure. But yeah, it seems like one day I was still living my life and then before I knew it I was in a psyche ward shuffling around and going through hell. It wasn’t technically "sudden-onset. But I fell fast and hard in that psyche ward. I wasn’t prepared but I didn’t have a lot to lose.

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I had a great growing up. Life was easy. But I didn’t know much about mental illness. I knew that anxiety or depression wasn’t a word spoken in our house pretty much. Virtually no education on what mental illness or mental health was.

I got to finish college before I fell ill in my mid thirties. late onset. man was that hell to go through. I don’t miss the depression I had early on. Just wrapping my head around what happened took years.

I was prepared by a hard childhood: the divorce and all the men my mom brought around (idiots and one racist). She had a brother with Sz, so she knew I had it. For me I spent years dealing with the paranoia, but nothing can really prepare you for psychosis.

The divorce therapy helped me learn how to talk to myself to keep me from getting too paranoid now that I’m on medication. I am lucky to be on the right meds.

I was quite the badass before schizophrenia.

Verbally abusive parent plus usually stuff fat kid deals with came in handy when paranoia started and I dealt with the thought broadcasters.

Yoga brain – this kind of calm will keep you functioning.

Beat OCD – cannot give into compulsions to soothe yourself as schizo or you will probably overload.

Minimalism – excess stuff usually drives a schizo victim crazy. Nothing too tempting to mess with, less stress to deal with. No money in house, glasses on you and some places it is own no electronics for a while except a smart phone. Some places are killing phones left in car or housing, so another burden to take wallet & cell with you when you leave but that’s life. We learn… Want better computer temporarily, use the library for free…In the state mental hospital here, name brand label clothing was getting messed up (by the staff)… If given opportunity for lockers with lock, better off to use it. If you bought at thrift store, it is left likely to be messed with. Moral of story, if you go into hospital take nothing desirable as fighting about staff about anything or even trying to be assertive can get you confined longer.

Think the youngers and churchies raised to know the community scams and know schizo instead of trusting the mental care & getting in trouble makes sense…except the millennials were raised to have everything handed to them and coddled, so entitlement problem and work ethic not seen as good enough by some and not considered desirable employee in some communities. But if you have a person who is not self directed and just following orders from voices, it does take some businesses to bankruptcy, causes hostile work environment and reduction in production…The people raised with corporal punishment practices instead of told they are bad little boy and given a new toy to shut him up make stronger adult & better workers. (Stayed in one city where the poorer/lower middle class millenials were forced to take restaurant/retail work and harassed out of the college sometimes. Try to get another type of work and sometimes coworkers might screw you out of there…Keep quiet and just work, studied your way through a subject and sometimes exceptions are made. So sadly, lots of these who when with service jobs could not get by and almost anyone could be a drug dealer…No other way to survive a segregated city.)